Opinion

Everyone stop, and repeat after me: There is no crisis of free speech. Freedom of religion has not been suppressed. Political correctness has not gone mad.

Here we are yet again with our tedious culture war. While many of us would prefer it to go away, it’s hard to ignore the frenzied noise of these past few weeks.

Israel Folau arrives at the Fair Work Commission on Friday. Folau is free to condemn homosexuals and sinners. He is putting his religious conviction over his contractual obligations, a choice he is free to make. Credit:Janie Barrett

Many of us had hoped, of course, that the May federal election would have reset the political debate. That it would have helped put a close to the old, tired ideological contests that have marked the past six years.

That still seems to be some way off. The Morrison government has yet to find for itself an agenda beyond its tax cuts. It seems content to focus the post-election attention on a Labor opposition still grappling with what it stands for. This leaves a vacuum that culture warriors are only too happy to fill.

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We’ve seen it on the education front, with a push for a free speech code for universities. And then there’s Rugby Australia’s controversial sacking of Israel Folau – which, as some have described it, has started to feel like an Archduke Franz Ferdinand moment in our politics.

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On each, the approach by culture warriors has been predictable. Find an incident. Turn it into a cause celebre. Confect outrage. Amplify and repeat for effect.

The panic about free speech on campuses, for example, has centred on a talk that author Bettina Arndt gave at the University of Sydney’s Liberal Club in 2018. Her talk about a “rape crisis scare campaign” on university campuses attracted a protest by students. Arndt and her supporters claimed it was a sign of creeping censorship. Primarily in response to this, Education Minister Dan Tehan commissioned a review of free speech within universities.

Look closer, though. Yes, there was a small protest of about 40 students drawn to Arndt’s event (the horror: a protest at a university). Police were called (seen that before). But Arndt’s event still went ahead. She got to speak. If this was an example of expression being shut down, it is certainly a strange one.

Don’t just take it from me. Ask Robert French, the former High Court chief justice who led the government’s review into universities. His report found that “claims of a freedom of speech crisis on Australian campuses are not substantiated”.

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As for Folau, there has been no shortage of conservatives – and some progressives – who have backed his cause. But does his treatment by Rugby Australia and sponsors reflect an attack on religious freedom?

Let’s be clear about a few things. No freedom can ever be absolute, including freedom of religion.

Consider the alternative: if we were able to claim freedom of religion as a trump card, what would that mean? Would it mean we’re entitled to break the law or to void contractual agreements by claiming we have a right to exercise our religious beliefs? Or that organisations aren’t free to dissociate themselves from an employee or charge whose conduct is inconsistent with their values?

In any case, it simply isn’t true that Folau’s religious freedoms have been fundamentally encroached. Folau can still say what he likes about homosexuals and sinners. It’s just that saying that may come with consequences. That’s not free speech being unjustly restrained. That’s Folau choosing his religious conviction over his contractual obligations. A choice he is free to make. It’s hard to see how Folau is a victim.

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Not that it matters for some. The cause of free speech isn’t always prosecuted with consistency. Many free speech champions wouldn’t be saying the same thing if we were talking about, say, a Muslim athlete or personality expressing an unpopular thought about Anzac Day. Don’t forget: many of those supporting Folau today cheered the hounding of writer Yassmin Abdel-Magied two years ago.

Hypocrisy is never far away. When it involves free speech, culture warriors on the right aren’t afraid to invoke victimhood when it suits them. It’s all part of a majoritarian identity politics – one based on race and religion, and on sex and sexuality – aimed at reinforcing a hierarchy of voice and position. It’s no accident the demands for more free speech tend to come not from those lacking power, but those who fear the erosion of their power.

We can expect to see more iterations of these battles, especially in the realms of popular culture. It has become part of the contemporary conservative mindset to believe that if you want political power, you must first change the culture – that “politics is downstream from culture”.

This helps explain why political battles are now inevitably cultural ones. Why our political contests are becoming increasingly defined in terms of values. This is what it really means to live in an age of identity politics.

Tim Soutphommasane is a political theorist and a professor at the University of Sydney.